16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (12 page)

I pulled up a stool and sat down beside her. ‘It’s to do with this present enquiry of mine for Mayor Foster.’ And I launched into as brief an explanation as I could of what I had so far discovered. ‘So,’ I asked, when I had finished, ‘does the name of this Jane Honeychurch mean anything at all to you? Married or not, the woman would be forty or so years of age by now.’

Margaret sat, chewing her bottom lip for a moment or two before giving a decisive shake of her head.

‘I’ll have to go and consult with Maria and Bess,’ she announced, getting up from her loom and putting on her cloak. Obviously, helping me took precedence over her own work, however urgent that might be. ‘Stay here,’ she added. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

She was optimistic. I reckoned that a good hour had passed before I saw her again, looking refreshed after a long gossip and exchange of information with her two bosom friends. During her absence I took in another basket of wool from the weaving sheds, a loaf of oaten bread which she had sent to be baked in the ovens in Water Lane and lied about her whereabouts to another caller, who urgently needed her advice on how to use alkanet as a colouring for cheese.

‘You’ve been in demand,’ I said as she closed the cottage door and divested herself of her cloak.

‘Never mind that,’ she retorted. ‘That nurse – Mistress Virgoe, or whatever she’s called – was in the right of it. Jane Honeychurch was a Bristol maid. Furthermore, you’re in luck. She still lives here. She’s married to one of the scullions who works in the castle kitchens. Jane Purefoy, her name is now. Her husband’s known to Maria’s nephew, although, apparently, Nick doesn’t care much for the man. Still, your business won’t be with him.’

‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Where does Goody Purefoy live?’

But here Margaret’s information was deficient. ‘Maria didn’t know for certain, but it’ll either be in one of those hovels just outside the castle walls or in the domestic quarters of the castle itself. Knock on a few doors. Someone will know where to find her. But watch your purse, if you’ve one on you. There are some rogues and villains living in that part of the town.’

‘There are rogues and villains everywhere,’ I said, bringing a hot defence of Redcliffe springing to her lips. I forestalled this diatribe by pointing out the new basket of wool, the loaves of baked bread and telling her about her neighbour’s enquiry concerning alkanet for colouring cheese. Then I took a hurried leave of her, before being forced to admit that I had failed to ask the neighbour’s name, and made my way back across Bristol Bridge, through a network of narrow side streets and alleys that eventually brought me to the towering bulk of the castle walls and the huddle of little cottages which surrounded them.

It needed no more than a couple of enquiries to elicit the information that Goody Purefoy lived in a cottage close to the great barbican gate, and a toothless crone with only one eye (a gaping, raw socket suggested that the accident had been of recent date) led me to a mean little hovel so closely crammed against the wall that it seemed part of the very stones themselves.

The woman who answered my knock looked far older than I had expected – more like someone of sixty than forty – but otherwise corresponding to Emilia Virgoe’s description of an ‘ugly, mousy little thing’. I imagined that the intervening years had not dealt kindly with her. Her hair, straggling from beneath a dirty linen coif, was now grey and very thin, her pale eyes almost colourless beneath non-existent brows, her complexion muddy and her skin wrinkled. She reminded me of a plant that had withered through want of light and air.

‘Goody Purefoy?’ I asked. ‘Jane Honeychurch that used to be?’

Reluctantly, she edged the door a little wider.

‘You’re the law,’ she said resignedly. ‘Ranald warned me to expect ’ee soon as we heard that that there body they’ve found is the mistress’s. Mistress Isabella’s. My man said you’d be round sometime or other, asking questions.’

‘I am enquiring about Mistress Linkinhorne,’ I replied with what I trusted was a reassuring smile. ‘But I’m not the law.’

‘Oo are you then?’ The door inched shut again and I quickly put a foot in the narrowing gap.

I explained as best I could to the small, suspicious face staring at me through the aperture, at the same time trying to ignore the chorus of sniggers, shuffling and insulting remarks from a gaggle of urchins who had left their play to come and harass this stranger who had been foolhardy enough to stray into their midst. A pebble from a homemade catapult struck me painfully between the shoulderblades. I swung round menacingly and the little army retreated a step or two, but as soon as my back was turned once more, I was hit again. I knew that I probably could, by sheer strength and size, send them packing, but guessed that I should then be confronted by the urchins’ mothers – a far more terrifying prospect.

‘I promise you, Goody Purefoy, I’m not the law,’ I repeated. And just at that moment, with a grating of wood against stone that set every tooth in my head on edge, the hovel door was opened wide enough to admit me. I slipped inside, enduring a repetition of the screech as the door was closed. ‘Thank you,’ I uttered gratefully.

‘Little varmints!’ my saviour muttered, jerking her head in the direction of the street, where, to howls and yells of disappointment, my small persecutors were trying to hammer their way in.

‘They’ll get tired of it in a minute,’ I said, ‘and go away.’

Jane Purefoy gave me a scathing look. ‘I know that, don’ I? I lives here.’

Reproved, I humbly bowed my head. A brief glance around the single room had told me there was very little to see. The floor was simply beaten mud with no covering of any sort, while the basics of table, two stools and a shelf holding a couple of pots and pans took up what space there was. A rolled-up mattress in one corner suggested that sleeping arrangements were equally primitive, and a meagre fire on a raised hearthstone belched more smoke than flame. Over all hung a pervasive smell of urine, and such light as there was came from an unshuttered window at one side of the room, opening on to the wall of the next hovel, only a foot or so away. The knowledge that this was the lot of so many of my fellow citizens suddenly made me ashamed of the comparative comfort I and my family enjoyed, and engendered in me a (short-lived) resolve never to complain about anything again.

‘Well?’ my hostess demanded. ‘What is it you want? You’re working on behalf of Mayor Foster you say.’

I started to repeat what I had already told her, but Jane Purefoy stopped me with an impatient wave of her hand.

‘I’m not daft, young man, nor am I deaf. I don’t need telling everything twice. I know I looks stupid, but I ain’t.’

‘No, no!’ I agreed eagerly. ‘Of course you’re not. I never thought so for a minute. It’s just that … What I mean is, I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me about Isabella Linkinhorne. You were her maid, Mistress Virgoe informs me.’

Jane Purefoy sniffed. ‘You been to see her, have you, as well as the old master? She was never a friend to the young mistress. Hand in glove with the old folks, she was.’

I nodded. ‘Mistress Virgoe did admit that her sympathies lay with the parents rather than the daughter.’

A faint smile lifted the corners of her thin lips. ‘My, my! You do talk fancy! A funny sort of chapman you be, if that’s your real calling, like what you say it is.’ She paused, waiting for my affirmation, but I merely nodded again, saying nothing. I had no intention to delve into my life history: I had done it too many times in the past and the constant repetition had long since begun to pall. When she realized that she was not about to get an answer, Goody Purefoy shrugged and waved me to one of the stools, perching herself on the other. ‘Well, what do ’ee want to ask, then?’

‘These three swains of hers – at least everyone seems to think that there were three – did she ever talk to you about them? Or was she as secretive with you as she was with everyone else?’

My companion grimaced. ‘Oh, she were secretive all right. Didn’t trust no one. Not even me. And I dessay I was as near to a friend as she ever had. She didn’t like women as a general rule. But then, she didn’t like no one, really. Hated her parents. I told her once she was lucky to have a mother and father who were so fond of her and gave her everything she asked for.’ Jane scratched her head through her hood. ‘I’ve never forgotten her answer, nor the look on her face when she made it. “Having everything you want’s no good,” she said, “if you’ve got to give your soul in return.” I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, and that I’d never known my ma and pa. I was an orphan, brought up on charity and sold on to anyone ’oo’d have me. That’s how I went to live with the Linkinhornes.’

‘And what did she reply to that?’

‘Said I was a fool. Ignorant, Stupid.’ The woman broke off, staring into space, musing resentfully.

‘Did she ever tell you the names of these three men?’ I asked eventually. ‘Or even of one of them?’

‘No, not that. But she told me some things.’

‘Such as?’

‘That there were three of ’em, like you say. She used to laugh about the way she had to be so careful not to arrange a meeting with two on the same day. “They all think they’re the only one,” she’d say. And when I’d ask her if she didn’t think it was unfair on them, she’d answer she hated men, and deceiving them was all they were good for.’

‘Did she tell you where she met them?’

‘Over in Westbury village. She used to ride that way ’cause Master had a cousin who lived in that direction. She used to tell her parents that she was visiting Mistress Jeanette.’

‘Master Linkinhorne vows that he and his wife knew nothing of these three men. No, that’s not quite right. They got to know of them through other people, but Isabella always denied their existence to him and Mistress Linkinhorne. Assured them the talk was nothing but vicious rumours and lies.’

Jane Purefoy nodded. ‘True enough.’

‘But why did she not wish them to know? Did you ever ask her?’

‘I did. She said lying to them was part of her revenge. When she did, at last, admit the truth, or when she finally went off with one of those men, it would be so much more terrible for them to realize they’d been hoodwinked.’

There was silence for a moment or two while we both contemplated the depth of Isabella Linkinhorne’s loathing for her parents. I thought of my own children and the pitfalls, the great yawning chasms that can open up between the generations. I felt the sweat start to prickle across my skin. Eventually, finding my voice, I said, ‘She may not have told you their names, but did Isabella confide in you anything else about these three men?’

‘She told me one o’ them were a goldsmith, and she showed me some of the jewellery he’d given her. Said he lived in Gloucester and came down this way now and then to visit one of the manor houses north o’ Westbury, where he had a customer. As far as the other two go, one lived in Bath and t’other in Bristol. And it’s no good you asking me more about them; that’s all I know. Who they were or what they did for a living, she never mentioned. Nor how she came to meet them. Nor why Westbury was their trysting place. Well, I can see why it might have been for the goldsmith, but as for the others –’ she shrugged ‘– your guess will do as well as mine, I dessay.’

I was a little further on with my enquiries. Jane Purefoy had confirmed what Alfred Humble had told me; that one of the men had lived in Bath. And I also knew now that it was the goldsmith who had lived in Gloucester. Concerning the one reported to have lived in Bristol, I was little the wiser.

‘Did Isabella ever describe the men to you?’ I asked. I was feeling desperately thirsty, but suspected that I was unlikely to be offered any refreshment. Money was tight and did not run to free ale. And I was wary of drinking the water, even though there was a small water barrel beneath the shelf. It might not come from the local well, but be taken straight from either of the rivers. I swallowed hard and repeated my question.

‘I told you before, I’m not deaf,’ was the tart response. When I apologized, my companion continued, somewhat appeased, ‘Young mistress did say as how one of ’em was very good-looking. But no, she never said which one. Did remark once that looks ain’t everything. You can make o’ that what you like.’

There was nothing to be made of it: it told me nothing that I did not already know. ‘What do you remember of the day Mistress Isabella disappeared?’ I demanded.

Jane Purefoy arched her back and rubbed her thighs, a hint that she was growing tired of this interrogation.

‘I recollect it were an awful day, wind and rain. Proper March weather. But young mistress would go out, even though Mistress Linkinhorne begged her not to. She went riding every day, across the downs, and nothing would stop her. I didn’t see her leave, but I remember her shouting for her horse to be saddled – one of the hands who worked for the master always did that – and she came upstairs to her chamber to put on her cloak. It was a dark blue one with a scarlet lining. Oh, yes, and I remember she’d snagged her stockings on a chair in the dining parlour. Real angry she was, because the only other pair she had were the red ones with the darn in the heel. Later in the day, Master let me go into Bristol to visit my foster mother. Mistress was going in to see a friend and she took me with her in the covered waggon.’

‘Did she also take you home again?’

Jane Purefoy grunted assent. ‘When we returned it were after dark and Master was in a right taking because Isabella hadn’t returned.’ There was a pregnant pause, before she added with a strange lack of emotion, ‘She never did.’

‘Why do you think Master and Mistress Linkinhorne didn’t suspect that some harm might have come to Isabella? Why did they believe that she’d simply run away with one of her swains? Men you say they refused to believe in?’

The colourless eyes regarded me with faint contempt.

‘There’s a difference between saying you don’t believe in something and really not believing it.’ Someone else had said something similar to me in the past few days. ‘They asked around for her, o’ course they did. But when it was made plain to them that young mistress had been seen with a man near Westbury village, I think they couldn’t pretend to themselves any longer that all the things people had been saying about Isabella were rumours and lies. Hit them all of a heap, it did. Master was quite ill for several weeks after, and I don’t think Mistress ever recovered. Drowned she was, a year later, and although it’s always been claimed it was an accident, I’m not so certain. I reckon she made away with herself.’